Human Resources

In this episode, Ricardo explores the SCARF model, a powerful framework developed by neuroscientist David Rock to understand and manage social behaviors in projects. He examines the five key domains of SCARF: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness—and discusses how each of these elements can significantly impact team dynamics and project outcomes.

In this episode, Ricardo discusses his recent article on artificial emotional intelligence (AEI), published with André Barcauí at the London School of Economics Business Review. AEI can significantly improve employment, healthcare, education, and negotiation by identifying small emotional clues. For instance, Character.ai allows users to interact with historical people, while hirevue.com uses avatars to evaluate candidates' emotional matches.

In this episode, Ricardo delves into the concept of mental liquidity and why it's crucial to think quickly and creatively in today's fast-paced environment. Mental liquidity is a mindset that combines flexibility, creativity, and resilience, allowing individuals to adapt to changing circumstances and challenges.

In this episode, Ricardo focuses on the Big Five Personality traits and their application in project management. The Big Five outlines five personality dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each of these traits could influence individual performance on different types of projects.

Businesses are scrambling to signal compliance with ESG (environmental, social, and governance principles). However, as ESG entrenched itself in the mainstream, it lost much of its original meaning and impact and became more of a marketing tool. Ricardo Vargas writes that the problem may lie in the decoupling of the ‘social’ and ‘governance’ components from ‘environmental’ concerns. He uses the example of a project to rebuild homes in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake to show how all three ESG components can work together. 

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about the flexibility people are looking for today to work from home or in the office. Following the pandemic, the relationship between employers and workers shifted, and employees now demand more freedom in their daily work lives. Having the option to work from wherever you like can help some people strike a better balance between their professional and personal lives, which in turn can boost productivity.

In this week’s podcast, Ricardo discusses DAO (short for "Decentralized Autonomous Organizations") Decisions on DAO platforms are made collectively, like in a real-world cooperative, with input from all members. With DAO, says Ricardo, we may not need a project manager, scrum master, or product owner … to oversee our projects in the future.

The success of digital transformation in organisations depends on a combination of technology and people. However, many leaders ignore the role of human capital in their plans. Ricardo Viana Vargas writes that when digital transformation efforts fail, it is often due to the mismanagement of people.

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about the difficulty faced by those overqualified for a given position. When a company creates a position for a new team member and receives a resume with qualifications much in excess of those needed, this CV is most likely not going to be chosen.

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about "The Great Resignation", a term created by Anthony Klotz, a professor at the University of Texas, A&M University. He explains that in the first few months of this year, 4.3 million people resigned in the United States. This phenomenon is not unique to the US. It is happening worldwide. Ricardo comments on the influence of the pandemic on this behavior and on four factors that lead people to resign.

In this week's episode, Ricardo makes an analogy on how you can use the same approach to close a project in your own professional life when it is time for you to move on. Sometimes we know that, for any reason you may choose, it is time for you to end a cycle to give the opportunity to start a new one. But this process is not as happy and joyful as the beginning of a project or job.

This week Ricardo returns to discuss the Dunning-Kruger effect and how it is usually more visible in projects and initiatives with more abstract deliveries and products. It is important to remember that the Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when the professional demonstrates confidence and a sense of competence incompatible with his job's real ability.

Transformation is personal. Always. Think about it. Organizational change is brought about one individual at a time. A change of behavior or a change of outlook by one individual in an organization is the cellular basis of achieving transformation. Individual transformation of employees is (at least) as important as any organizational transformation. Without it, the chances of any transformation succeeding are low. Without it, the chances of an organization continuing to evolve and respond to new changes are almost non-existent.

Only 35% of projects today are completed successfully. One reason for this disappointing rate is the low level of maturity of technologies available for project management. This is about to change. Researchers, startups, and innovating organizations, are beginning to apply AI, machine learning, and other advanced technologies to project management, and by 2030 the field will undergo major shifts. Technology will soon improve project selection and prioritization, monitor progress, speed up reporting, and facilitate testing. Project managers, aided by virtual project assistants, will find their roles more focused on coaching and stakeholder management than on administration and manual tasks. The author show how organizations that want to reap the benefits of project management technologies should begin today by gathering and cleaning project data, preparing their people, and dedicating the resources necessary to drive this transformation.